A Mother's Advice

For 90 Years, Colorado Family's Land Has Been Its Salvation

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Like his mother before him, he loves this timeless land.

The sea of brown grass, the ceaseless wind beating across the pitch-black prairie, the calving in the bitter winters.

This is the promised land, with soil as charitable as it is selfish.

It has given 83-year-old Howard Devor the blessings of food, honest work and freedom. It has taken the straightness from his back and creased his fair skin.

Howard wouldn't have it any other way.

For this is the place that his mother, Sarah Jane Wilklow, came to at the age of 22.

It was 1905. She worked as many as 20 hours a day on the hardscrabble 160-acre homestead, trying to breathe life into the bleak landscape. She slept in a ramshackle pony shed made of tin until her brother could finish building the homestead house.

Using only a hammer, a saw and a square, he built one room at a time.

In 1907, Sarah Jane married her neighbor, Arthur Devor, and they merged their two adjacent homesteads into one. They had eight children.

One of them, Howard, still lives on the 320-acre homestead near Falcon Air Force Base and raises cattle that he sells at auction.

He keeps a black-and-white photograph of his mother in a prominent spot in his living room.

Though she is long dead, he can still hear her words: "Never sell the homestead, Howard. That would be like selling one of your brothers and sisters. It's part of the family."

All eight of Sarah and Arthur Devor's children were born in the same room on the west end of the homestead house. Four boys; four girls.

Sarah had eight babies in 10 years, all delivered by Dr. Brown of Colorado Springs.

The Devors would crank their telephone when they needed him. Eight short rings meant an emergency.

A lantern propped atop a windmill would illuminate the dark prairie so the doctor wouldn't lose his way on the 15-mile trip.

Sarah named her children Cecil, Arthur, Howard, Mabel, Doris, Jessie, Iva and George.

Howard weighed 4 pounds when he was born July 20, 1912.

As soon as he could walk, he started to help with the family chores. They raised cattle and grew pinto beans, corn and feed for the animals.

His mother kept a bountiful garden: tomatoes, lettuce, turnips. And potatoes, which were always planted on St. Patrick's Day.

Howard remembers the basement of the homestead house filled with dozens of quarts of food. His mother was always working.

"Mom would be up in the middle of the night sewing for the girls or baking bread, or she'd be washing on the board," Howard says.

"We had running water," he says, with a twinkle in his eye. "We'd run and get two pails of water and run back. Running water."

In the 1920s, the oldest boy, Cecil, was stricken with "sleeping sickness," an insect-borne disease that causes inflammation of the spinal cord.

He slumped over at his desk one day at school, and from that day forward, Cecil never left his wheelchair.

"He got it from the horses," Howard says.

Cecil had to be fed like a baby--lots of juices, mashed potatoes, soft foods.

In 1929, Howard's father signed over his 160-acre homestead to his wife and left. He took young Arthur with him. Howard doesn't talk about why his father left, although he says his father did return for visits.

When his dad left, Howard assumed the role of father. He was still a student at the Drennan School, a "modern school," he remembers, with electricity and a post office in the basement. School buses with wooden wheels picked him up.

"In 1929, that's when everything went clear down," Howard says. "We sold a 200-pound hog for $6--3 cents a pound."

After his graduation in 1931, Howard devoted all of his energy to the farm and the people who were still on it. Eventually, it was just him, his mother and Cecil.

Howard built a concrete ramp for Cecil; he shaved him and fed him. Every two hours, Howard got up in the middle of the night and turned Cecil, who weighed only 70 pounds.

"He always got a big smile on his face. He'd say thank you," says Howard. "He never lost his mind."

Howard took care of his brother until Cecil died in April 1955.

Like his mother, Howard has never thought about leaving the promised land.

But in 1968, family members feared he would lose it to a woman from Nebraska named Maye Trunnell.

Maye was visiting a friend in Colorado Springs who had told her all about Howard.

"I knew how wonderful he was before I even met him," Maye says.

She first laid eyes on him at a Grange meeting.

"That's when I got a glimpse of him, and he saw me. But there was too many people around," Maye says.

Later, Maye and her friend stopped by the Devor homestead.

"We used the excuse that we needed to get some fruit jars. After all, it was fall, you know."